Sky News GhMyths about Mathematics
There is common belief that only a few gifted
individuals have what it takes to learn mathematics, and that hard work cannot compensate for this.
There are also studies showing that when asked to explain why some children do better in mathematics than others, Asian children indicated their teachers, and their parents point to hard work, while American counterparts point to ability.
The following are the three most prevalent myths people have about mathematics.
- Aptitude for mathematics is inborn.
This myth states that people are born with a mathematics gene. Either you get this gone or you don’t. It is hopeless and much too hard for average people. Mathematics is a cultural thing, some cultures never got it!
lt is natural that some people just are more talented at some things like music, athletics, and mathematics and to some degree it seems that these talents must be inborn.
Karl Gauss is claimed to have helped hís father with bookkeeping as a Small child, and the Indian mathematician, Ramanujan discovered deep results in mathematics with little formal training.
It is easy for students to believe that doing mathematics requires a mathematics brain, one in particular which they have not got. Mathematics is indeed inborn, but it is inborn in all of the US.
Mathematics is a human trait, shared by the entire race .Reasoning with abstract ideas is the province of every child, every woman, every man, and every culture Everybody can therefore do some mathematics.
To be good at mathematics you have to be good at calculating their
Some people feel somewhat ashamed about counting their fingers.
Modern mathematics is a science of
ideas not an exercise in the calculation.
An honest mathematics teacher often admonishes his students to check his calculations on the chalkboard because he is sure to get them wrong if they don’t.
Note that being a wiz at figures is not the mark of success in mathematics. A pocket calculator has no knowledge, no insight, no understanding yet it good at addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division then
a human will ever be.
But we are human beings, not
calculators. This myth is largely due to the methods of teaching which emphasize finding solutions by rote.
- Mathcmaties require logic, not creativity.
This myth states that If the logical side of your brain is not your strength, you’ll never do well in mathematics. It is
true mathematics does require logic because We want things to make sense.
We don’t want our equations to
assert that 1 is equal to 2. But this is not different from any other field of human endeavor, in which we want our results and propositions to be meaningful.
Mathematics is Somewhat unique but this is because logic itself is a kind of structure – an idea- and mathematics is concerned with
precisely that sort of thing. It is a mistake to suppose that logic is what mathematics is about. or that being a mathematician means being uncreative or unintuitive.
There is beauty in mathematics, the beauty is in the patterns of numbers, of geometric shapes.
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